If I Can Write Free Verse, You Can, Too!

What is that you say? You're not a poet? Have you ever tried to write a poem? Ever been inspired to do so? Have you ever seen a sunset so spectacular that you wanted to paint it? If only you knew how. I try free verse poetry when something I see moves me emotionally.

I wrote a lot of things before I ever attempted poetry. In high school, I remember reading a lot of poetry and memorizing it but we were never asked to write it. That was a shame. 

Prose writers should also try their hand at poetry. No one says it has to be a prize winner. Like any other kind of writing, you have to keep working at it. I'm the first to admit that I like to write Free Verse because there is no worrying about meter or rhyme. You can say whatever you like in whatever style that appeals to you. 

One night I couldn't get to sleep and I began watching the shadows of trees outside on the bedroom wall. I thought about my insomnia kind of night the next day and decided to write about it, not prose but a short poem. This was the result:

Darkness

Night shadows shimmer

 across my bedroom wall;

tree branches bend to

the will of the wind,

reaching for the window.

Moonlight guides my steps

as I pad to the empty kitchen.

In the lunar-lit darkness,  

more shapes flicker and beckon   

on this well-known path.

A glass of milk to help

me drift into sleep

before too many thoughts

again wrap round my mind

while I watch silent shadows

dancing through this wakeful night.

                               --Nancy Julien Kopp

It's merely another way of saying "I couldn't sleep last night and I watched shadows on the wall before I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk in hopes I could stop thinking and get to sleep." Isn't the poem a better way to say it? 

Once you begin writing free verse poems, you'll start looking at the word choices you've made. If you use things like alliteration--in poem above the first line is an example: shadows shimmer, then farther down branches bend and will of the wind and finally, silent shadows. As in prose writing, try for active verbs, no repeating of words, and visual images. 

Use something simple when you first try to write free verse. Let the first draft simmer a few days and go back to it. Read it to see where you might put more descriptive words, better verbs and other things to make the poem sound better. Read it aloud. As I read over the poem I've used as an example, I see places I might change.Lots of alliteration in first stanza and only one other place. Maybe I'd try for more.  Poets edit and revise just like prose writers do.

In honor of National Poetry Month, try to write a free verse poem. Who knows? You might like the form and keep on writing.